


Songs From The Void

by scribefindegil



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Filk, Found Family, Gen, Lullabies, POV First Person, Stolen Century Spoilers, how 2 make yourself sad about two layers of Magnus backstory at once, in-universe filk
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-10
Updated: 2017-07-10
Packaged: 2018-11-30 12:03:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11463204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scribefindegil/pseuds/scribefindegil
Summary: Multimedia fic/filk project of songs that Magnus and Lucretia sing to the Voidfish and stories about how they were written.





	Songs From The Void

**Author's Note:**

> You can listen to the Voidfish Lullaby here on my Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/user-628290807/voidfish-lullaby

I awoke to the sound of singing.

I'd become used to such things over our year at the Legato Conservatory; no matter how much the builders invested in soundproofing there was still the constant background noise of students practicing their compositions or humming snatches of some piece that their Light of Creation had broadcasted out to us. The first thing I noticed about this new world was how quiet it was.

But this singing wasn't like what I'd heard at the Conservatory—the polished, perfect tones with their rich sound and strong vibrato. It was hushed, and not all of the notes were in tune, and the singer's voice was rough around the edges.

I followed the sound through the passageways of the Starblaster, navigating by feel in the dark. I had considered that perhaps after spending an entire year off the ship I would lose some of my familiarity with its layout and need the lights to see again, but no. It's too well ingrained by now. No wonder, I suppose. I've spent most of my life here on this vessel. By now, twice as many years as I spent on our home Plane.

The singing came from the kitchen, and as I approached I saw a dim, shifting light cast gentle shadows across the walls. It must have been the haze of sleep that I hadn't fully shaken off, but I didn't recognize the source of the light until I turned the corner and saw Magnus playing with the baby.

He stopped singing as soon as he saw me, and the baby dropped its duck and drew back against him, wrapping its tendrils tight around his ribcage. I stood still for a moment, letting it observe me, and slowly it climbed back down into Magnus's lap and retrieved its duck, holding it up to show me.

"Oh," Magnus said. ". . . Hello. Did I wake you?"

"I'm a light sleeper," I told him, but he apologized anyway.

"The baby keeping you up again?"

He nodded, pinching the bridge of his nose. That black eye of his that returned with each new cycle was just beginning to fade, leaving a smear of yellow-green across his cheek. He looked about ready to fall asleep right there on the floor.

"Hey, I got three straight hours tonight before it started crying!" he joked. "It's getting better!"

He yawned, and the baby poked at his mouth with its tendrils in case he was hiding a duck somewhere inside it. I couldn't help but laugh. Magnus laughed too, even as he gently batted the tendrils away. He picked up the duck and moved it around in circles in the air. The baby jellyfish floated up and followed it, humming contentedly. Magnus took advantage of its distraction to yawn again.

"Tea?" I suggested.

He looked at me as if I had just personally crested a mountaintop while riding a giant bear with the Light of Creation in my hand.

"You're a lifesaver."

I excavated the kettle, checked to make sure no one had been using it for arcane experimentation, and set it on to boil. There were even clean mugs—one from a pottery student at the Legato Conservatory who was experimenting with new glazing techniques, and one that Lup had bought for Barry at a market a few cycles back. The scientific sigils on it are beyond my knowledge, but from how much Barry laughed when she gave it to him I'm assured that whatever pun it makes is hilarious.

When we left our home planar system, we had one matched set of dishes. Exactly seven of everything, well-made and plain and white. Out of the originals I think we have one cracked salad plate left. Everything else is a mish-mash of things bought and traded and acquired over the course of dozens of worlds. We don't intend to, but we almost always end up with some kind of tangible reminder of the places we pass through.

But the baby is the first time that reminder has been a living creature. I know Magnus was afraid it wouldn't survive the reset. I was afraid, too, but when the threads pulled us all back together it was still there, and it felt like a miracle. Davenport chastised him for risking everything over a jellyfish, but Magnus ignored him. He just held it and cried.

I'm not sure any of us realized how much it would change things to have one world where we actually saved something. Especially for Magnus. He's the one who's always willing to stay and fight and die on worlds where we don't get the Light, just to buy them a few more seconds.

And now we have a refugee, a glowing baby jellyfish with a galaxy inside it that looks like nothing we've ever seen before. It might be the last one of its kind that ever exists. At least that isn't a fear that the rest of us have had to deal with, not after Cycle Four when we first found a world with people like our own. There are still humans out there, and dwarves and gnomes and elves. We may be the last from our world, but we aren't the last of all. It's cold comfort, but it's comfort all the same.

"Lucretia," said Magnus, pulling the baby back from the countertop it was trying to investigate and settling it back into his lap. "Do you think it . . . understands? Why we had to take it away from its family?"

I paused for a moment, the mugs heavy in my hand.

"It saw what was happening," I told him. "It saw the Hunger coming, and even if it didn't know what it was, it could tell that it was dangerous. I . . . it's hard to tell how much it understands. It's a baby, and its species certainly seemed intelligent but that doesn't mean their minds work like ours, and . . ." I trailed off. This wasn't what Magnus wanted to hear. It wasn't even what he was asking. Not really.

"I think it knows that you saved it," I said, and Magnus relaxed.

"And I think . . ." I continued, unsure of my phrasing, "That it understands that it has you for a family now."

The baby was curled on Magnus's lap, humming to itself as it played with one of the many ducks he had carved it. Most of them had been left behind as we fled the Hunger, but there are already more of them scattered throughout the ship. Magnus’s room is full of wood shavings. He had a block of wood and his old knife on the floor next to him, although the knife was sheathed. He never carved when the baby was nearby in case he hurt it.

He looked down at the jellyfish and smiled.

"Yeah," he said. "It has all of us."

I unearthed the chamomile tea from the back of the cupboard and placed a bag into my own mug before asking Magnus what he wanted. He deliberated for a moment, and then he laughed softly. "Do we still have any of that . . . it was black, but with the lavender?"

Some more shuffling through the perpetually unorganized tea cupboard revealed that we did. I’d given up on trying to keep it neat some dozen cycles ago.

As I finished preparing our tea, Magnus began to hum to the baby. It wasn't a tune that I knew. The jellyfish hummed back a few times before deciding that its duck was more interesting.

"What were you singing earlier?" I asked him.

He blushed. "Just trying to calm it down," he said. "Some old lullabies, you know . . ." It seemed like he was expecting me to laugh at him.

"I didn't recognize the tune," I said. "Was it from back home? Sing it to me; I'll write it down."

Magnus shrugged and his face turned redder. He still looks like such a boy even after all these years, those ridiculous sideburns not quite managing to hide the childlike roundness of his face.

"Yeah, okay," he said. "Sure. I'm . . . not a great singer. You should have heard my mom sing them. She was way better."

"That's fine."

The kettle boiling gave him a moment of respite. I poured out the water, added a splash of milk and a single sugar cube to his mug, and reached out to hand it to him.

"Keep it over there until it cools down a little?" he asked. "I don't think the baby understands hot things. It could get hurt."

I nodded and placed the mug of lavender earl gray on the table next to me. The aroma wafted though the room, combining with the scent of my chamomile. Magnus leaned back against the cabinet and breathed in deeply.

"My mom always said lavender was good for soothing babies," he said. "Of course, she was talking about human kids. Don't know how it works with magic glowing jellyfish. It probably can't even smell. Anyway . . ."

If it had been any other time, I wouldn't have asked. There are things we don't talk about. But three in the morning is a strange and impulsive time, and my mouth was quicker than my brain.

"Did you ever plan on having children, Magnus?"

He blinked. Looked at me and then looked away. Moved the baby's duck around for it to chase.

"I mean, not like this!" he said. The jovial tone felt forced.

"I'm sorry, I—"

"No." He cut me off. "No. It's okay. It just . . . I was so young when we left, you know? My whole life ahead of me. I guess I thought . . . maybe someday, but it was so far off that I didn't really think about it. And since we left . . . well . . . there've been so many other things to regret that I didn't have the time to worry about that one. I . . . would have liked to, though. I think. What about you?"

"I . . . don't know."

"Fair enough."

I sipped at my tea, still hot enough to burn the tip of my tongue.

Silence stretched out between us, only broken by the baby's occasional quiet humming. Then Magnus began to sing. "Lavender's blue, dilly dilly, lavender's green . . ."

He broke off after a couple of lines and shot me a slightly abashed smile. "The words don't really make a lot of sense."

I shrugged. "Lullabies aren't known for their lyrical complexity."

That got a laugh out of him, and he sang the rest of the song without interruption. His voice was much softer than I'd expected. I've really only heard him sing drinking songs before. And though the tone is a little wobbly, he has a pleasant voice, warm and comforting. The baby hummed back at him, but if he’d been hoping for the tune to have any kind of calming effect he must have ended up disappointed. If anything, the baby seemed to become more energetic, climbing around Magnus and chasing its duck across the room.

I stood, cradling my half-finished mug in my hands. "I'm going back to bed," I told him. "Good luck, Magnus."

He smiled sleepily. "It's okay. I think it feels safer at night, anyway. Fewer scary people around."

As I walked back to my quarters, I could hear him singing again.

After the tea and a few pages of writing, I slept late. I only woke when Barry came and knocked softly on my door to tell me breakfast was ready.

Magnus had barely moved from when I'd last seen him, but someone had brought a chair next to him and he was half-collapsed across the seat, his jacket pillowed below his head. The baby nested on his lap and kept reaching up with its tendrils, pulling on his arm until he lowered it and wrapped it around the glowing bell. As it settled the arm into place, the lights inside of it spun and began to glow more brightly.

"Listen," Magnus kept saying, stroking its bell with his other hand. "'S okay. You don't have to be scared."

"I don't know," said Taako, spinning around from the stove with a frying pan in his hands. "We're pretty scary."

Magnus glared at him, and Lup laughed and flipped the brim of her brother's hat up.

The baby hummed a high, keening note—the sound it made when it was distressed.

"Hey," Magnus whispered, curling close around the baby like he was trying to turn his whole body into a shield. "It's okay. Shhh . . . it's okay . . ."

Slowly, the mumbled words of comfort turned back into a song. A song with the same tune he'd sung the night before, but different, more hesitant words. By the time breakfast was properly set up the two of them were asleep on the floor. When Taako threatened to wake them, Lup levitated his food away from him and he had to chase it halfway across the ship. The others went out on their preliminary explorations, while I stayed behind and spent the next few hours tip-toeing around where Magnus was curled up with the baby pressed into the crook of his shoulder.

It was several days before I heard the whole song. Magnus sings it to the baby every night, and when he's out on business sometimes I hear the baby humming the tune to itself while it hugs one of its ducks. Usually, they sing it together: Magnus pacing through the Starblaster, rocking it gently like the waves on a still lake, while the baby hums along until it falls asleep in his arms.

> **Voidfish Lullaby**
> 
> _(Tune: Lavender’s Blue)_
> 
> Stars are above, dilly dilly, worlds are below  
>  What we will find, dilly dilly, no one can know  
>  But I know this, dilly dilly, every world round  
>  I will make sure, dilly dilly, you’re safe and sound.
> 
> Home is behind, dilly dilly, far far away  
>  What is ahead, dilly dilly, no one can say  
>  Though you are lost, dilly dilly, you’re not alone.  
>  I’ll keep you safe, dilly dilly. I’ll be your home.
> 
> Hush now and sleep, dilly dilly, no need to fear  
>  When the day breaks, dilly dilly, I’ll still be near  
>  Worlds are below, dilly dilly, stars are above  
>  And we are here, dilly dilly, shining with love.


End file.
